Ukraine Urges Georgia To Distance Itself From Russia
By Khatia Bzhalava
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
The Ukrainian government calls on the official Tbilisi “to distance itself publicly from the decision of the Russian Federation, whose leadership is violating international law and perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reports.
The statement comes as Russia lifted part of the trade sanctions against Georgia and allowed the export of Georgian dairy products to the Russian Federation. According to the Ukrainian MFA, the Russian Federation approved this decision against the backdrop of the Georgian authorities’ disinclination to support the new sanctions of the European Union against Russia.
“We believe the promotion of trade relations with Russia, whose armed forces are attacking peaceful Ukrainian cities with missiles and bombs, killing innocent civilians, including children, to be unacceptable in the strongest terms,” the statement reads, adding that the Georgian government ‘must have forgotten’ the horrors of war against Russia and “are now trying to seize the moment to cater for their own interests.”
The statement stresses that the conduct of business with Russian companies and the profit earned from that cooperation provide Russia with additional resources to continue its ‘atrocious’ war on Ukraine.
The Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia announced on Monday that approval of the importation of Georgian dairy relates to an application by Georgian private companies dating back to 2020, stressing that Georgia has not addressed this issue during wartime. He also emphasized that this issue was addressed by private companies that were interested in entering a new market. Davitashvili stresses that these companies had not received the answer until last week, “when the Russian side proactively decided that there might have been positive decisions concerning the applications received from Georgia.”
Russia’s recent decision has been negatively assessed by the ruling party MP, Irakli Kadagishvili, who called Russia’s decision to open its market for Georgian dairy products a “political provocation.” He noted that there will be many such steps from Russia to “escalate the tension,” however, the Georgian government’s steps would not be ‘synchronous’ to theirs.
According to Levan Ioseliani, the Vice Speaker of the Parliament and MP from the opposition Citizens party, Many of Russia's initiatives are directly aimed at causing internal strife and social division in Georgia. He stressed that it was not accidental that Russia’s Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision state body only granted the permission for import of dairy products from Georgia last week, in response to the application dating back to 2020.
